Radio National Orchestra Bucharest - Piano Concert - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Constantin Silvestri (1913-1969) was a Romanian conductor, pianist and composer who was already playing the piano in public at the age of 10. At the age of 16, he won the George Enescu Prize, presented to him by the composer himself. Enescu, who very much admired Silvestri, is believed to have said InchWe want Silvestri to be able to do everything we expect of him - and that's a lotInch. Silvestri was a very humorous man; at the same time, however, very serious and critical; a non-conformist. He was inventive, with complex interests and a difficult nature. Owing to political changes in Romania and rivalry between several colleagues, follow-up performances of InchOedipusInch were abruptly cancelled, as were other concerts of his in Romania. Silvestri decided to leave his homeland and eventually settled in England. He successfully performed with many renowned orchestras, and led the rather provincial British Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra to worldwide fame. Nevertheless, in parallel with the prestige attached to being an orchestral conductor, Silvestri (a brilliant improviser) also devoted his time to playing the piano and to compositions for this very personal instrument, to which he entrusted his most secret thoughts colored by his own subjectivity. It is a great credit to the pianist Luiza Borac to be presenting here to the public the first recordings and arrangements of Silvestri's complete piano works.

These three works by the Romanian composer Livia Teodorescu-Ciocanea (b. 1959) show her approach to three of the central genres of the western classical tradition symphony, concerto and cantata. The powerful and programmatic Archimedes Symphony was inspired by the death of Archimedes in the siege of Syracuse in 214 bc; the Rite for Enchanting the Air - a concerto for various flutes and orchestra - is a kind of magical journey into a dizzying world of sound and colour; and the cantata Mysterium tremendum aims to reconcile Byzantine and Catholic liturgical traditions. All three make clear her fascination with orchestral timbre and texture - and have distant roots in Romanian folk-music.

Andre Velter - C'etait L'afghanistan 1978 [COMPACT DISCS] date 04/04/2003